Here in the University of Rochester’s Rettner Computer Lab, late last September on a cool Fall evening while magazine designer UR senior Karina Banda was in her apartment, I hit PUBLISH. Afterwards, I confess, I bummed a cigarette from a Lithuanian graduate student, then wandered down to the river for an exultant smoke.

Happy Birthday, Talker! The dark glam of a self-destructive rocker: Johnny Depp as the 17th-century writer John Wilmot, a k a the second earl of Rochester, in Laurence Dunmore’s film The Libertine.

Bill is a fiction writer, storyteller and poet, and an Assistant Editor with Narrative Magazine. He has published poems in such places as Ploughshares, Anderbo.com and Cottonwood and in recent issues of Off Course, Otis Nebula, and Literary Juice; two chapbooks with White Pine and FootHills; and self-published Walking Home from the Eastman House. Bill has told stories in various places in Rochester and upstate New York, including the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Most recently, he performed his original story, “Two Kinds of Fear,” a completely documented telling about the lives of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass during their time in Rochester. Bill will be performing this story at Rundel in March of next year. His short stories appear in a recent issue of Crack of the Spine Literary Magazine and Midway; and in upcoming issues of Indiana Voice Journal, Sick Lit Magazine and Hypertext. Bill taught English for 26 years to non-native speakers for BOCES 2 in Spencerport. He and his wife Pam have two children and two grandchildren.

There is one not widely known fact about Bill. In a previous life, Bill was the famed English poet, the Earl ofRochester. Bill — I mean the Earl of Rochester — was as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. On this occasion, Bill channels his inner Johnny Depp.

Talker of the Town is a continuation of conversations begun in three Democratic Chronicle blogs: Make City Schools Better, Unite Rochester and the Editorial Board.
Since February 2013, urban education has been the primary focus. Now, the flowering of topics is limited only by our imaginations.

Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.